They didn't ask their king what he'd done to incur the wrath of his peers. For the most part, that question didn't occur to them: But other questions did: practical questions about another levy and overextended lines of supply, a shortage of weapons in the city's armory, and the havoc that floods were wreaking on Urik's normally reliable roads. Hamanu listened more than he answered. He'd been Urik's supreme commander for thirteen ages, but, together, the mortal minds he'd assembled had more experience. Individually they offered insights and perspectives he might have overlooked.
The Lion-King's armies were unbeaten because the Lion-King was not too proud to take his advisers' advice.
Evaporating puddles from the Tyr-storm made for a sultry, sticky afternoon. Men, women, and Hamanu himself shed their ceremonial garments—or the illusion of them— and, clad in plain linen, thrashed out a battle plan. Night had fallen when Hamanu gave his approval to the best notions that mortal and immortal minds could devise, never hinting that it wouldn't be enough if he were right about the enemy they faced.
Enemy or enemies.
Try as he might in odd moments in the map room, or afterward, alone on his storm-tossed rooftop, Hamanu could not wrestle the day's events into a single pattern. Rajaat's champions had weaknesses deriving from their own human natures and the spells that created them. They'd contrived to keep their weaknesses secret, but after ages of spies and spells, Hamanu could scarcely believe that he'd been any more successful keeping his secrets from his peers than they had been keeping theirs from him. He'd had Windreaver, of course, but he didn't know that he was the only champion whose victory was one ghost shy of complete. And Gallard had talked to Borys, who'd known why the Lion of Urik would never become the Dragon of Urik.
Unless Rajaat were still behind it all. If Rajaat had cast the spells that brought Uyness's voice to the Lion-King's throne...? But, no, Hamanu hadn't recognized the personality behind the spell, and whatever enmity the surviving champion peers had toward one another, it wouldn't dull their wits where the War-Bringer might be involved.
Or had Rajaat found a way to conceal his sorcerous essence?
Hamanu found no answers on the rooftop above his moonlit city. The sounds of rescue and repair, of mortal life determined to continue, no matter the price, rasped his nerves. He slashed the air and returned to his workroom, where the city's noise was masked by walls and Pavek was enthralled by the unfinished story written on the vellum sheets.
The Lion-King's sandals and jewelry were illusion. They made no sound as he approached the lamplit worktable.
"Were you bored—?"
Pavek shot out of his seat before Hamanu finished his question. The chair toppled behind him and the table in front of him. Loose vellum, the ink stone, the stylus and— not to forget—the leather-wrapped shard went flying. The air snapped as Hamanu, moving faster than sight or sound, caught the leather a handspan above the floor. For a moment, they both stared at the innocent-seeming parcel, then at each other; then Pavek, who'd barely caught his balance after his leap, dropped hard on his knees.
"I am an oaf, O Mighty King," Pavek insisted breathlessly, though his agitated thoughts implied that the Lion of Urik might have given a poor man a bit of warning.
"And I might have warned you, mightn't I?"
Wisely, Pavek said nothing. Hamanu righted the table, returned the shard to its top, and collected a handful of vellum sheets.
"You were reading. What do you think?" A veritable storm of thoughts stewed in Pavek's mind, but they were all half-formed and elusive. As impatient as any fountain-side poet reciting for his supper, Hamanu had to wait for the man's spoken words.
"That's all? No greater understanding of me, of the choices I made and make? It is not the version you were taught in the orphanage," Hamanu said with certainty. That version—the Lion-King's official history—was a god's tale, full of miracles, revelations, and infallibility, nothing like the human frailties the vellum revealed.
It was embarrassing to beg a mortal's opinion. It was degrading. Worse, it stirred the dark fire of Hamanu's anger. "Speak, Pavek! Look at me! Ask a question, any question at all. Don't just kneel there like a poleaxed inix. I've told you secrets I've kept for ages. Don't you want to know why?"
"O Mighty King, forgive me, but I couldn't hope to understand. I have so many questions, I wouldn't know where to begin—"
"Ask, Pavek. Look at me and ask a question, ask as if your life depended on it, for it does!"
The head came up, wide-eyed and very mortal, very fragile. The question flowed exactly as it formed in Pavek's mind—
"Were you Rajaat's favorite? Is that what you became after—?"
Two questions: twice as many as he'd commanded and an excuse—if Hamanu needed one—to slay the trembling man where he knelt. But, strangely, the rage was gone. Hamanu walked around the table, righted the chair, and eased his illusory self onto its seat.
"The answer that comes to me, Pavek, is no. I was never Rajaat's favorite. I hated him before I knew what he was, before he made me what I became, and he knew I hated him. I wouldn't have tolerated his favor, and for all these years I have believed that I didn't have it. Tonight, though, it's not me who asks the question, but you, a mortal, whom some might call my favorite. Hatred doesn't protect you from my favor, dear Pavek, and so I realize I have become what I hated when I was a man.
"Today is a sad day, Pavek. Today I've realized that my hatred amused Rajaat, amuses him still, as yours amuses me. I was the last of his creations—but not because we imprisoned him. No, he'd had two hundred years to ponder his mistakes before he created me. I was the last because I was everything he meant a champion to be. I loathed him, but, yes, Pavek, I was Rajaat's favorite. I carried in my bones his hopes for a cleansed and purified Athas; I still Hamanu recalled the mortal man he'd been and felt the weight of his immortal age as he'd never felt it before. Looking across his worktable, he saw the gray dust and empty memories of an unnatural life. He didn't see Pavek at all, until the man said—
"I don't loathe you or hate you, O Mighty King."
"Then you are either an innocent or a fool," Hamanu said wearily, indulging himself in a moment of self-pity— and eager to stifle a favorite, whose voice, at this moment, sounded too much like his own.
"Telhami says not, O Mighty King."
Perhaps Rajaat was right. Rajaat had already lived two thousand years or more when he began creating his champions. Perhaps a man needed several ages to learn the ropes of immortality—to learn to pick his favorites from the ranks of those who hated him.
When Telhami lived in Urik, Hamanu had forgotten Dorean and every other woman. Her eyes, her hands, her laughter had made him human again. For how long? A year?
Twenty years? Thirty? He'd lived an enchantment. Every day had been bright and sparkling, yet different; every night was the stuff from which men's dreams were spun. Then, one morning she was dressed in traveler's clothes.
She'd had a vision during the night of a place beyond the Ringing Mountains, a place where the air was cool and moist, where the ground was a thick, soft green carpet, and trees grew halfway to the sun. Cold springs bubbled year around in the place she'd envisioned, and at the center of everything was a waterfall shrouded in mist and rainbows. Her life in Urik was over; she had to find her waterfall.
Druids cannot stay, she'd said—as if that explained everything.
And he, of course, could not go. Urik had already suffered from his neglect. A generation of templars had succeeded to power thinking that their king was a besotted fool. The ordinary folk on whose shoulders he and the templars stood did truly curse the Lion-King's name.